UK Edition
Review
Vanessa, Glyndebourne: a solid production can't hide the charmlessness of Barber's opera, review
Undenied rumour has it that Samuel Barber’s romance was slotted into Glyndebourne’s schedule at relatively short notice when plans for a Bernstein centenary production of West Side Story fell through. Both the opera and the musical date from the mid Fifties, but Vanessa seems a limp and retrospective thing when considered against the youthful energy and musical imagination that infuses the tale of the turf war between the Jets and the Sharks. Even in this solid production (its first in the UK), it fails to charm or convince.
Barber’s music is trapped in a genteel world of ballroom waltzes and tearful farewells, where ladies in long gowns give orders to their servants. Carefully crafted, densely orchestrated and decorously paced, its melodramatic theatricality bears the marks of Puccini’s influence (Tosca particularly), while its attempt to conjure up soprano raptures owes much to Richard Strauss and Der Rosenkavalier. Two swooping showpiece arias clumsily follow each other at the beginning; at the end comes an elaborate canonic quintet. In between, it is stodge.
The story told by Gian Carlo Menotti’s libretto is an exercise in the manner of Daphne du Maurier. Vanessa, a Miss Havisham recluse living with her niece (or possibly daughter) Erika in a gloomy mansion, awaits a visit from her former lover Anatol, whom she has not seen for 20 years. But Anatol is dead, and the man who appears is, in fact, Anatol’s gigolo son (and possibly hers too), who proceeds to seduce and impregnate Erika before marrying Vanessa. Erika aborts the child and Vanessa and Anatol depart for a new life, leaving Erika embittered and alone.
None of the relationships depicted emerge plausibly, and what in surer hands could be fascinatingly ambiguous is only plain baffling, with Vanessa’s personality and motivation crucially left vacant. Could the whole farrago be some sort of commentary on Menotti’s troubled personal relationship with Barber, his partner and rival in both music and sex?
With the help of video, Keith Warner’s unfussy staging does what it can to clarify, and Jakub Hrusa’s conducting honours Barber’s score whole-heartedly. If Emma Bell struggles to make Vanessa herself sympathetic, Virginie Verrez has an easier job as the victimised Erika. Edgaras Montvidas projects crisply as the unattractive Anatol, and Rosalind Plowright and Donnie Ray Albert etch strong cameos as Vanessa’s mother and the family doctor. The opera has the advantage of being very short (barely two hours), but it is no fun at all.
Until August 26, in repertory with Saul. Tickets: 01273 81500; glyndebourne.com